Obama super PAC has $20 million

7/5/12 9:07 AM EDT

Robert Draper has a long piece in The New York Times on the Democrats' efforts to catch up in the super PAC game, including some evidence that for the pro-Obama group Priorities USA Action, it's working:

Burton and Sweeney’s creation now appears to be on relatively solid footing. As of late June, the super PAC has amassed a total of $40 million, with almost $20 million in the bank and about a dozen million-dollar donors onboard. Among the most recent is Qualcomm’s co-founder Irwin M. Jacobs and his wife, Joan, newcomers to the world of political mega-giving, whom Burton and other Priorities surrogates spent a year courting in person, on the phone and by e-mail before the couple relented and gave $2 million. Priorities’ $100 million goal is within reach but by no means assured. “In order to do that,” Ickes says, “we’re going to have go get some $5 million and $10 million donors.” Another Priorities representative says wistfully: “Maybe there’s someone we never heard of. Is there a Charles Koch out there on our side?”

So far, the answer is no, which is why Democrats are still talking in terms of narrowing the gap in outside spending, rather than matching the GOP.

The story is also a great account of the shifting mind-set among Democrats on attacking Mitt Romney's business record — which has gone from real discomfort over the idea of targeting Bain Capital, to recognition of the fact that the tactics seem to be working:

“They’re spending ridiculous amounts of money on the other side,” [potential donor] Amber Mostyn said. “All the crazy commercials they’re going to put up — how do you combat that?”

Burton was ready for this question. “You don’t do it dollar for dollar,” he said. He whipped out his iPad and showed the Mostyns a few slides from his PowerPoint presentation. The slides included polling data indicating voters’ lack of familiarity with Romney’s business record at the private-equity firm Bain Capital, as well as financial figures from the 2010 midterm election showing how well-spent donations could help a Democrat prevail over a better-financed Republican opponent.

Then Burton pulled up something else on his screen: raw video footage that Priorities intended to use for attack ads against Romney. Appearing were the somber images of several men and women who were laid off by Bain. The individuals were tracked down by Brennan Bilberry, the super PAC’s 26-year-old research director, and persuaded to tell their stories on camera. One of these was a middle-aged paper-mill worker named Mike Earnest, who had been asked to help build a 30-foot stage that Bain officials would later stand upon while announcing to Earnest and other millworkers that they were being laid off. “Turns out that when we built that stage,” Earnest said in a flat Midwestern cadence, “it was like building my own coffin.”

Steve Mostyn was impressed by their research. He asked them what sort of donation they were talking about.